The present invention relates to safety belt systems for vehicles.
There are a very large number of different safety belt systems available for vehicles. Initially they included the concept of what are now referred to as static belts in which the seat belt was secured rigidly to the car at two places, a tongue was slidable on the seat belt and was engageable in a buckle to provide a lap and shoulder portion of the belt. The length of the belt was adjustable to suit and individual's size.
Subsequently belts were provided with retractors in which the belt was automatically retracted and was therefore adapted to fit any passenger. The retractor was arranged to be locked by one of several different means in a situation of acceleration or deceleration beyond a predetermined value.
In recent years it has been a requirement that seat belts be provided in the back of a car and it has been traditional to provide a retractor form of lap and shoulder belt for the two side passengers and a lap belt only for the centre passenger on the back seat of a vehicle. This is now considered to be unsatisfactory and it is desirable to be able to provide relatively easily a lap and should belt, with a retractor arrangement, for the rear centre passenger also. To date no satisfactory arrangement has been provided which readily enables the seat back to be folded forwardly in an estate vehicle or in a hatch-back vehicle, or indeed in a vehicle with a boot where it is desirable to provide the facility of folding rear seats.
It has become common practice in most cars nowadays to provide the rear seat so that two different parts of the seat can fold forwardly, thus there being one portion of the seat, about 60% of the length, in which two passengers can sit, and the other portion, usually about 40%, for the other side passenger.
It would be desirable to provide a seat belt assembly which can satisfactorily be used in such vehicles.